Some games don't end when you win.
THE VANISHING GAME
THE
VANISHING GAME
A coming-of-age short film about innocene and irreversible consequence.
A boy trying to hold it together.
A brother trying to be seen.
A game neither of them understands.
Status: pre-production | Production planned June 27-28 2026
Two brothers find a loaded gun disguised as their dying grandfather’s chess set,
and the older boy pulls the trigger without ever knowing he did
Concept: The Loaded Gun
Every kid has held something they didn’t understand.
The Vanishing Game is a coming-of-age story about that moment. Two brothers, alone in a house fighting emotions, find something in their dying grandfather's private room they were never meant to touch. What follows is not a horror. It is a film about innocence operating at the edge of its own understanding. A sixteen year old boy who loves his brother completely, acts out of panic, and pulls a trigger without ever knowing he's holding a gun.
The supernatural is real...but not the primary focus. The ending is quiet, inevitable, and irreversible. The moment every person in the audience will recognize. The moment you understood, too late, the power of what you were holding.
The Story
It's a summer afternoon. Mom is at the hospital. Jonathan is sixteen and in charge.
His younger brother Pete has broken the one rule in the house. Grandpa's private room. A space packed with the artifacts of a life filled with adventure. Veteran medals. Taxidermy. Artifacts from travels to far-off places around the world. And in the corner, a chess set unlike anything either of them has seen. Carved stone figures. Ancient. Beautiful. Enticing.
Pete just wants to play. Jonathan just wants control. Neither of them understands that those two things when put into motion on this board, start things that can't be stopped and are irreversible.
The rules are older than either of them. The stakes are real. And somewhere in the room, among the trophies and the artifacts and the photographs, is a family photo of two little girls who once sat down at this same board.
One of them grew up to make a rule, "Stay out of Grandpa's room"...Learning some moves cannot be taken back.
Tone
Coming-of-age drama with supernatural elements
The tone this film lives in the space between the ordinary and the supernatural. Two boys on a summer afternoon. Alone in a house where the silence doesn't help them deal with emotions of a family tragedy. A game that starts as a distraction. The supernatural arrives the way real danger presents itself...All at once. We invite the audience into the boys relationship, before building the tension, and pulling the floor out from under them. Leaving them with the devistation we leave Johnathan with sitting opposite the empty chair that once held his brother.
Target Audience
Primary Audience
The Vanishing Game is designed for an audience that finds genre films most powerful when the camera is really watching the performance. Viewers who stayed with Hereditary for the tension, not the scares. Who recognize Stand By Me and Mud as films about something true dressed in something dangerous.
Secondary Audience
The Vanishing Game concept is original. The execution is planned from opening to closing frames. With an ending that stays in the viewer long after the film is over.
It's a film for festival audiences who are hungry for productions that trust them.
Tone-Driven Demographic
They are not horror fans waiting to be scared. They are not fantasy fans waiting to be transported.
They are drawn to atmosphere over exposition...Think, Stranger Things. Performance over spectacle. Endings that respect their intelligence enough not to explain themselves.
The Characters
Johnathan (he/him: 15-16)
Jonathan is the oldest child in a house without adults, which means he is performing a version of adulthood he hasn't matured into yet. He is not cruel. He is not careless. He is a teenager who has learned to cope with hiding from emotion by finding something he can win.
He loves his brother completely. He just doesn't know how to live in that love without hiding it. When the game turns dangerous, Jonathan panics. He is trying to fix something he doesn't understand using the only tool he has.
He is the boy who picks up the gun not understanding the power.
Pete (he/him: 11-12)
Pete is the first one through the forbidden door. Not out of mischief. Out of grief.
When Jonathan appears in the doorway, Pete suggests a game, an effort to get his older brothers attention. He sits down at the board and makes an illegal move. Jonathan can't help himself, the need to control is strong.
Pete has spent his whole life speaking Jonathan's language. He knows that correction is just another word for affection. He trusts his older brother.
Which is exactly why the ending is unbearable.
The Set (the 3rd character)
Mesoamerican in origin. Carved stone figures dressed in gold. A civilisation built on ritual sacrifice and the understanding that some forces exist beyond human control. The board has been sitting in Grandpa's room longer than the boys have been alive, waiting, for the next sacrifice.
In Mesoamerican culture the jaguar was a creature of the underworld, moving in ways that defied expectation. On this board they are the Knights. The pieces nobody sees coming.
This set looks like something recovered rather than purchased.
Visual Style & Tone
A Hauntingly Beautiful Blend of Light and Shadow
Act I — Mildred is Alive
Aspect Ratio: 16:9
A grounded, domestic frame that supports the realism of Mildred’s lonely but ordinary morning. The wider ratio gives a sense of space above and below, but keeps the sides of the frame tighter, boxing her in.
Lighting: Warm, Motivated by Sunrise
Light spills in through the windows with a warm, golden hue, evoking the feeling of life.
The kitchen, dining area, and front room glow gently with morning softness, suggesting the remains of a daily ritual she performs out of habit, not purpose.
Mood: Static but Familiar
Compositions are still, centered, and locked-off with no extra movement, merely observational. Subtly emphasizing her boxed-in world.
Visual Style & Tone
A Hauntingly Beautiful Blend of Light and Shadow
This film begins in warmth and ends in cold. That is not a metaphor. It is a production decision.
The Vanishing Game ecentially takes place in a single location; Grandpa's private room, a space that is larger than the house should allow. Wood panelling. Old lamps. A dirty window. Every surface layered with a life lived in strange places. The room is the antagonist before we're introduced to the board.
As the game progresses, the room changes. Not through camera tricks or visual effects. Through light.
The Lighting Arc
Complete control over the visual transformation across every scene.
At the start, warm practical lamps carry the room. The window pushes soft afternoon light across the chess set. The space feels inhabited. Strange but safe.
As pieces are lost, practicals die one by one. Nobody replaces them. The warmth bleeds out the same way it bleeds out of the game. The window becomes the only light source — cold, flat, directional. By the endgame it falls across the board like an interrogation light. The Jaguar Knights cast long shadows across the carved stone squares.
Same room. Same lens. The light tells the story.
The House | The Hall | Grandpa's Room Early
The Game: Phase 1 | Phase 2
The Game: Phase 3 | The End
Lenses & Format
Anamorphic - The decision is not aesthetic. It is dramatic.
The horizontal compression makes Grandpa's room feel too large and yet, too confining. The oval bokeh renders the chess pieces in soft focus as something organic. The lens flares catch the gold detailing on carved stone and the dying light of practical lamps in a way no spherical lens can replicate.
Act II — Death’s Arrival
Aspect Ratio Shift: 2.4:1 Cinemascope
This new aspect ratio introduces subtle tension and unease—a world that is more cinematic, and less alive.
Anamorphic lenses warm the edge of the frame, suggesting an in-between world.
Lighting: Soft, Cool, Cloud-Diffused Daylight
The natural light remains motivated by the same windows, but no longer feels warm. The sunlight is now softer, cooler, and more indirect. Subtle gray-blues and gentle shadows. No golden warmth.
Atmosphere: Subtle Haze from the Shower
A slight visible haze lingers in the air, grounded in story logic: the shower was running when Mildred died. It adds a supernatural glow to the space, softening edges, and textures.
Key Team Members
Screenplay
Dominic Humlie is a local filmmaker and writer working on both sides of the camera.
A Chemeketa College film program alumnus, his credits include DoP on Psychic Death (2024) and The Mable 23 (2025), Cinematographer on Oswin Woods (2023), and Gaffer on Purgatory Pending (2026).
The Vanishing Game marks his debut as a produced screenwriter.
Producer/Director
Chris Liles is a producer-director whose work spans narrative short film and broadcast television. His debut short The Promise (2024) earned a nomination at the McMinnville Short Film Festival. His follow-up, Purgatory Pending, is currently in festival submission.
With camera credits on Shark Week and Top Chef, Chris brings a technical precision currated in professional demanding productions to his projects.
Director of Photography
Alex Bitz is an Oregon-based writer, director, and filmmaker whose storyteller's eye translates naturally behind the camera.
His credits include The Red Notebook (2014) and the upcoming A Few Days After (2026). On The Vanishing Game, Alex takes on the role of Director of Photography, bringing the instincts of a director to every frame.
A member of the McMinnville Film Club, he is an active voice in Oregon's independent film community.
Gaffer
Allen Tyler is an Oregon-based filmmaker and alumn of the Portland Community College Film Program, Allen directed Psychic Death, the McMinnville Film Club's 2024 production.
His credits include 1st AD on Purgatory Pending (2026), assistant director on A Few Days After (2026), and gaffer work across narrative and commercial productions. On The Vanishing Game, Allen serves as Gaffer, bringing a director's eye to the film's lighting design.
Festival Strategy & Distribution
Production & Post
Filming in late-June 2026 with post-production completed by December 2025 to meet 2026 festival submission deadlines.
Festival Circuit 2026
Targeting mid-tier North American festivals including HollyShorts (LA), Bend Film Festival, Seattle Film Festival, SFiFF (Santa Fe), and New Orleans Film Festival.
Community Building
Festivals serve as launchpads, connecting The Vanishing Game with filmmakers and fans. When the festival run ends, we'll leverage the community for online buzz.
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